“Maybe tomorrow it won’t fit in the inauguration and I won’t say ‘leave’, but I will say ‘away'”. It is Lolita who reflects the high expectations raised by the inauguration, today in Jerez de la Frontera, of the Lola Flores Cultural Center.
On January 21, 1923, Dolores Flores Ruiz was born in this Cadiz town. In the centenary of her birth, the myth of the flamenco singer and dancer already has her museum. Yesterday the artist’s daughters, Lolita and Rosario, who like the entire Flores family are two top-level artists, presented the Lola Flores Cultural Center to the media and gave some details.
Daughters also of another renowned artist, Antonio González, the Pescadilla, gypsy rumber from Grà cia inventor of the fan, the technique of striking the guitar while playing, Lolita and Rosario were excited about this new space, which is a tribute permanent to his mother.
“She was a woman from the village, from Carrer del Sol, who stopped to chat with people – says Lolita -. He said it looked like the Virgin Mary of the Dew, because people brought the creatures close to him so he could touch them.” The museum is “her experiences”, affirms the eldest daughter. “My mother would have liked the museum to have been built in her birthplace, but the truth is that there is only room for five. She wasn’t aware of how big he was.”
Rosario, as excited as her sister, considers it a beautiful place, with pieces that make her live. “My mother was an explosive bomb. My sister and I will be heartbroken, because my whole life is there too.” Next to the museum there will be a flamenco interpretation center in the future.
The new museum has the latest technologies to recreate the Pharaoh’s art, which will allow you to see her sing and dance, while she herself accompanies visitors through the rooms. Her clothes, her belongings, her drawings, her awards, her films… It couldn’t be any other way, since Lola Flores was a transgressor, a modern and innovative woman, who incorporated into the flamenco art the modernity of fashion and design.
Thanks to her art, the eyeliner or the miniskirts she wore on some occasions were never at odds with the folklore that represented this goddess. Two hundred pieces that she took care to save make up this exhibition, at Nau de l’Oli, in the heart of Jerez. It will be a changing exhibition, as not all the pieces will fit.
But you will be able to see her wedding dress, the daughters announce, giving an unexpected preview of what the audience attending the opening will discover tomorrow. And they also explained that the voice of the audio guide is given by Elena, the actress who is Faraona’s granddaughter and Lolita’s daughter.
“And those who haven’t given in, too,” Lolita quipped, adding: “It’s also been hard for me to get rid of her things, because this woman, for my sister and for me, she was our mother”.
At the presentation event, at the González Byass winery, Lolita and Rosario were accompanied by the mayoress of Jerez de la Frontera, Mamen Sánchez. “We had to create this museum and I put my effort into achieving it. Lola Flores was my grandmother’s next-door neighbor and I think all the neighbors in Jerez didn’t understand that this museum didn’t exist yet,” said the mayoress.
“When we women propose something, we achieve it”, she added. Sánchez also had words of thanks to the family, “for the ease with which they have worked” to make this Lola Flores Cultural Center a reality.
